Songs of Leonard Cohen is the 1967 debut album of Canadian musician Leonard Cohen. It foreshadowed the future path of his career, with less success in the United States than in Europe, reaching #83 on the Billboard chart and achieving gold status only in 1989, while it reached #13 in UK and spent nearly a year and a half in the UK album charts.

Although the famed record producer John Hammond (who initially signed Cohen to his contract with Columbia Records) was supposed to produce the record, he became sick and was replaced by the producer John Simon.[8] Simon and Cohen clashed over instrumentation and mixing; Cohen wanted the album to have a sparse sound, while Simon felt the songs could benefit from arrangements that included strings and horns. According to biographer Ira Nadel, although Cohen was able to make changes to the mix, some of Simon's additions "couldn't be removed from the four-track master tape."[8] The instrumentalists - not credited on the album sleeve - included Chester Crill, Chris Darrow, Solomon Feldthouse and David Lindley of The Kaleidoscope, who had been recruited personally by Cohen after he saw the band play at a New York club. Backing vocals were by Nancy Priddy, who at the time was John Simon's girlfriend.[9]

The album became a cult favorite in the US, as well as in the UK, where it spent over a year on the album charts.[10] Several of the songs on that first album were covered by other popular folk artists, including Joan Baez and Judy Collins.

"Suzanne", an ode to a "half-crazy" woman who lives near the St. Lawrence River in Montreal and who is capable of profound personal/spiritual connection with the song's narrator, was ranked 41st on Pitchfork Media's 'Top 200 Songs of the 1960s'.[11] The track "So Long, Marianne" was also featured on the list and ranked 190th.[12]Mojo has described the album as "not only the cornerstone of Cohen's remarkable career, but also a genuine songwriting landmark in terms of language, thematic developments and even arrangements."[13]

Songs of Leonard Cohen was released on CD in 1989, while a digipak edition was released in some European countries in 2003. A remastered version, with bonus tracks, was released in the United States on April 24, 2007, and in Japan on June 20, 2007. The Japanese version was a limited edition replica of the original record album cover with lyric card insert.

In 2009, the album (including the 2007 bonus tracks) was included in Hallelujah - The Essential Leonard Cohen Album Collection, an 8-CD box set issued by Sony Music in the Netherlands.

On the back cover of the album is a Mexican religious picture of the Anima Sola depicted as a woman breaking free of her chains surrounded by flames and gazing towards heaven. In a Rolling Stone interview, Cohen described the image as "the triumph of the spirit over matter. The spirit being that beautiful woman breaking out of the chains and the fire and prison."[14] Cohen found the picture in a botánica near the Hotel Chelsea in 1965.[15]

Judy Collins recorded "Sisters of Mercy" on her 1967 hit album Wildflowers. Sting and The Chieftains performed a Celtic music-influenced version of the song on Tower of Song. "Sisters of Mercy" was also covered by British folk musician Wizz Jones on his 1970 album "The Legendary Me" and by Area, a darkwave band from Champaign, Illinois on their 1988 CD The Perfect Dream. Beth Orton performed "Sisters of Mercy" in the film Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man.